Career in Marine Electronics

[fairbank56]

Originally Posted by alaska pirate

Gone are the days of component-level repair. Board replacement repair is the game in commercial equipment and integration of components in a system is beyond most users' abilities.

Your right about that! Technicians today should be called something else because the young ones don't have a clue as to how to troubleshoot to component level. Iv'e been doing it for over 30 years and still do it today but nowhere near as much as 12 years ago and beyond. Equipment doesn't fail as much, service data and parts were easier to get and you could actually see the components without a magnifying glass I get a thrill out of troubleshooting to the faulty component and doing the repair for the cost of a $2 part as opposed to sending it to the factory for a $150 repair bill. An example is the masthead unit (wind speed/direction) for a Brookes & Gatehouse boat performance instrument system. $1200 for a new one. I remove the circuit board and repair it for just a few bucks.

Eric

[alaska pirate]

Originally Posted by fairbank56

Your right about that! Technicians today should be called something else because the young ones don't have a clue as to how to troubleshoot to component level. Iv'e been doing it for over 30 years and still do it today but nowhere near as much as 12 years ago and beyond. Equipment doesn't fail as much, service data and parts were easier to get and you could actually see the components without a magnifying glass I get a thrill out of troubleshooting to the faulty component and doing the repair for the cost of a $2 part as opposed to sending it to the factory for a $150 repair bill. An example is the masthead unit (wind speed/direction) for a Brookes & Gatehouse boat performance instrument system. $1200 for a new one. I remove the circuit board and repair it for just a few bucks.

Eric

The technology has progressed beyond component-level repair. It is prohibitively expensive to own the soldering gear to repair a 4-layer board, just as it is nearly impossible to troubleshoot which chip is bad on a sonar video processor board that uses onboard rom and microcode in the processors, even if that type of documentation were available which it isn't. Most owners want fast. They aren't fishing because whatever it is you are working on is broken. Swap the board.

You're right though. It is hugely satisfying to replace a 50 cent transistor and get the radio working again. It is the reason I haven't removed the Sailor VHF on Blue Note.